


Human Traditions II

by Greenisher



Series: The rewards of being loved [6]
Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Ace disaster Gus Porter, Chocolate, F/F, Gay Disaster Amity Blight, Gen, Gus and Amity are the human research dream team, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29476530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenisher/pseuds/Greenisher
Summary: “What comes after Valentine’s Day is the most important day of all!” Luz announced. “February 15th!”“What’s February 15th?” Gus asked, eyes wide.“Discount chocolate day!” Luz announced, grinning widely. “All that Valentine’s chocolate goes half price, baby!”
Relationships: Amity Blight & Gus Porter, Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Series: The rewards of being loved [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119710
Comments: 5
Kudos: 113





	Human Traditions II

**Author's Note:**

> Happy February 15th. I love you.

As usual, their small group had been chilling in the quad while Gus asked Luz questions from his human magazine. 

"What's with all the hearts in February's Yass Kween magazine?"

Luz looked where he was pointing, briefly looking away. She'd been painting Amity's nails, and nearly dropped the entire bottle of nail varnish. "Oh no! It's Valentine's Day already?"

"What's that?" Willow asked.

"I think I know this!" Gus poured back through his magazine, brow furrowed. "Here it is! 'Valentine's is the most romantic day in the world.'" he blinked at the article. "Most romantic day? Really?"

"Yeah," Luz took Amity's hand to start going back over the first layer of polish. "It's traditional to go out on dates and buy chocolate for your loved ones and stuff. I guess it's a big deal for some people, but it's not hugely important. I mean, it's never been big for _me_ but I guess nobody's been my Valentine before now."

"You didn't celebrate it with friends?" 

"I didn't really have any," Luz said, shrugging. "Mostly, other humans think I'm weird."

"They're objectively wrong," Amity told her, firmly. How was that possible? Everything about Luz was deeply lovable. The other night she'd gone on a ten minute hyper focused tirade about the use of colour as a metaphor in the Azura novels and Amity's heart had felt so full of love she'd nearly passed out. "You should have had a hundred Valentine's. Objectively."

Luz went red. "Well!" She said, looking deliriously pleased, "I didn't, but I was fine! No lasting scars! Definitely no crying when everyone in my class for a valentine but me, no siree! But anyway, Valentine's isn't the most important holiday."

"What is, then?" Gus asked, fascinated.

“What comes after Valentine’s Day is the most important day of all!” Luz announced. “February 15th!”

“What’s February 15th?” Gus asked, eyes wide.

“Discount chocolate day!” Luz announced, grinning widely. “All that Valentine’s chocolate goes half price, baby!”

"So you just buy it all then?" Asked Willow. "And then you give it to your person you're dating?"

"Oh, I guess," Luz grinned. "Me and my mom used to buy a bunch and then eat it all together!" 

"Don't you ever get sick?" Amity asked, concerned. "Chocolate has milk in it!"

Luz kissed her hand. "A little bit. But it's nice to get them. It means you have someone who loves you."

Amity and Gus shared a look, some sort of psychic communication occurring between them at once.

That was what had led them to this moment, in a school kitchen, examining supplies. Big bags of dark chocolate. A vast amount of heavy cream. Cocoa powder. More things she hadn't bothered to index. "And," she said, dropping the collection of shallow cardstock boxes on the far end of the counter, near where Gus had stocked scissors, paper wrappers, and ribbons, "You're certain this will work?"

"It should do," Gus pointed at the cook book he was working from. "This book of human recipes has never failed me. I don't know who this Nigella Lawson is, but I think she's some kind of human goddess of cooking?"

"Huh. But this isn't discount chocolate."

"We'll make it seem cheap. Okay!" Gus continued. "First thing we need to do is melt the chocolate while continuously stirring. Obviously I'll do that, since I'm super strong." 

"Uh huh," Amity folded her arms, refusing to help as Gus grabbed a pot, filled it with water and brought that to the boil, and began to pour chocolate into a metal bowl above the boiling water. 

He managed about thirty seconds of stirring before turning to throw her a pitiful look. "I think my arm's going to fall off!"

Amity took pity on him, sighing as summoning an abomination. It loomed over him, whispered, "I do this," in its creepy voice, and then took the spoon he'd been stirring with. "Better?" She asked.

"So much," Gus said thankfully, taking a step back to approach this from another angle. "I'm going to see if I can work out exactly what we need and when."

She stepped out of the room to check her Penstagram, and when she got back in, Gus had conjured up a half dozen clones to help, but for the most part they were bumping into each other. Two were arguing over how to temper chocolate. One had climbed up on her abomination to try and give it instructions directly - hang on, that one wasn’t a clone.

Her abomination shrugged off the very real Gus and he fell with a yelp. Amity summoned a hand to catch him and he groaned. “Too tight!” She released the spell and he landed on his butt with a yelp. “Ow! Okay, okay. No climbing the abominations.”

Amity leaned back against the wall, eyeing him. If Gus broke his neck trying to make chocolate, she could call her burgeoning attempt at a friendship with Willow over. “Can you make sure you don’t die while making confectionery?”

“What!? I’d never die in such an uncool way!” He thought about it for a moment. “Well, actually, yes. I would. Good point, pal!”

“I will pay you not to call me that in public.”

Gus hummed, ignoring her as he poured cream into the melting chocolate. Her abomination kept pouring as one of Gus’s clones darted over to pour in another bag of chopped dark chocolate. A second clone was setting out a place for the chocolates, covering part of the counter in cocoa powder. A third was cleaning up the packaging left over. 

“Okay!” A fourth Gus said, nose in a cookbook, as the mixture the abomination was stirring turned a milky brown, close to solid. “I think we can start rolling them now. Amity, stop!”

She looked up from where she’d been instructing her abomination to reach into the bowl. “What’s wrong?”

“It can’t be the abomination doing it!” The first Gus said, exasperated. “Its fingers are too big! We need little hands to do it.” Amity lifted her hands and Gus measured them against his own.”Little hands!”

“Ugh.”

“Come on!” Gus grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the counter. He grabbed a pinch of the chocolate mixture, rolled it into a ball and dropped it into the cocoa powder. Amity followed his lead, making a face at the texture. 

“Feels like abomination goo.”

“Gross!” Gus said, with a big grin. He handed his rolled chocolate to the next Gus in line, who wrapped it in a little paper. The next Gus arranged it beautifully in a box. The fourth was attempting to scale her abomination. Amity narrowed her eyes but followed his lead, taking the small ball of chocolate and rolling it in the cocoa powder until it grew firmer, handing it down the line. One of the Guses shoved one into his mouth. “Hey! Stop that number three!”

Before long they’d assembled eight boxes. “Okay,” Gus said, “One for Luz from you,” Amity’s ears went red.”A friendship box from you to Willow, two friendship boxes from me to Luz and Willow. Two boxes from me and you to King. Who’s your fourth one for?”

“Oh,” Amity hid it. “That’s a...it’s a secret.”

“Not asking what I’m doing with my fourth?” Gus asked, a sly grin on his face.

“Nope,” Amity said, deciding that this was the best route forward to keep him from finding out the recipient of her fourth box. “I bet they’ll love it though.”

"I hope so," Gus grinned back.

It was strangely...nice to talk to him on their way back to the Owl House. Gus seemed to know everything about the human world; as they strolled he showed her his human trinkets.

(“And here’s the other hundred uses for a paperclip in alphabetical order! Starting with A! It affixes things!”)

Gus ran ahead the final few metres, diving to hug Willow who was helping Luz plant roses outside. "Your flowers look good," Amity said, drawing closer.

Willow smiled up at her. "They're conscious hedgerows," she explained. "With enough of a magical charge, they can grow to form a psychic seal around any area that needs protecting. They'll be able to telepathically tell who belongs and who doesn't." Amity cocked her head, examining Willow with silent respect. She'd only been in the plant track for a year; this was highly advanced stuff. It was incredible how quickly she learned. A pang of guilt wrenched in her stomach.

"Easily undone by fire," Eda muttered, stepping out of the house. She looked like she was having a bad curse day; her back was curved and her hair was even more unkempt than usual, and she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and long skirt. Amity took this in, and looked back to Luz, who was on her knees in the dirt, concentrating hard on trying to copy down the exact runes involved in making the living hedgerows sentient. Sometimes this happened. She became so caught up in trying to work out a puzzle that everything else fell away. But watching her work was calming.

"Guess what!" Gus slid the box of chocolates into Willow's hands. "It's discount chocolate day!"

"What!" Luz jumped to her feet, suddenly aware of her surroundings. "Sweeties from my sweeties? Gus! Amity! You two recreated discount chocolate day?"

She couldn't help but smile as she slid the box meant for Luz into her waiting hands and kissed her cheek. "Happy discount chocolate day," she said, leaning into her. 

"I got you one too!" Gus announced, holding his out to her. Luz took it with a gasp. "Friend chocolate!"

Awkwardly, Amity held out a box to Willow. "Friend chocolate."

"Thank you," Willow said, and smiled in her lovely, gracious, kind way. 

"Hey! What the heck? You guys are giving tribute to them and not ME?!" King had appeared from inside the house, what was visible of his face furious. "I'm the King of Demons! I deserve tribute!"

"We saved our best chocolate for you, King!" Gus held out his box. "I made sure to hand select only the best."

"I didn't," Amity said, holding out the box she'd made for him.

King opened one of the boxes and poured some of the chocolate into his mouth, tasting it. "Acceptable," he said, and grabbed the second box. "I'm going to eat this in front of Lilith!"

Eda watched him scurry away. "One day, she's going to eat him," she said, thoughtfully. "Oh well. I won't warn him."

"Where is Lilith anyhow?" Luz asked, leaning back. There was a crash from somewhere inside the house.

"Gone Crow beast," Eda shrugged. "It's all under control, kid. Well. Mostly. We'll see."

Amity waited for Luz, Willow and Gus to turn away before stepping forward. "Um," she said. And then held out the box to Eda. Eda narrowed her eyes, looking between Amity and the box. "I just. You've been. You didn't have to welcome me. But you did. And you've been. Nice to me. And I wanted to say thank you. So thank you."

Eda took the box. "Thanks, kiddo. You always manage to make every interaction awkward. That's pretty impressive."

"You did try to kill me with traps the first time we met. That's pretty awkward."

"A light impaling never did anyone any harm," Eda ruffled her hair out of place. "Go hang out with your buddies, okay?"

She nodded, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly, and stepped back to her friends. Luz reached for her hand as she rejoined the group, an automatic gesture. Beside her, Gus elbowed her gently. "You never asked what I was gonna do with my fourth box!"

"Give it to your dad?" She asked. 

"Nope!" He held it out to her, and she felt her heart twist. "Here! Thanks for being my Human Research Pal! A box of chocolates for my fellow HRP!"

"Human Research Pal?" Luz asked. Willow giggled. Amity felt her ears grow red. 

"It's a-- we just--"

"We appreciate humans in all different ways," Gus said, grinning widely. He was doing this on purpose. She shrugged, the will to fight him on the name leaving her. She could be his HRP, she could concede that. He'd made her a box of discount chocolate day chocolates, after all.

"Sounds spicy," Luz squeezed her hand. "Can I come to these meetings?"

"Maybe we'll invite you," Amity squeezed her hand back, voice light. "It's a pretty exclusive club." She looked down at the box and felt suddenly bad she hadn't offered her final box to Gus. He'd made so many, and now was the only person without one. She took the lid off and held it out to him. "Here. We'll share, HRP."

Up above, in one of the windows, something large and feathered stalked, and Eda gave it a wary eye. But the kids found themselves celebrating discount chocolate day exactly how Luz had described: staying up long into the evening, laughing and eating chocolate until they all felt sick.

Amity didn't let go of Luz's hand until late, when it had grown so dark that it was hard to see anything but stars. Luz reached into her bag and retrieved something. A solid book, with a drawing of the two of them, dressed as twin Azuras, on the cover.

Inside the pages alternated between short stories about the two of them going on wild quests and beautifully, carefully rendered drawings of them. Fighting monsters, casting spells. Always together.

"I don't know how you always seem to understand me," she murmured, tracing the lines of a drawing of herself, saving Luz from a dragon as Luz saved her from a different dragon. 

Luz held her hand, which was all she really needed in the end. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was so much fun to write.
> 
> Also, if anyone knows of a chill TOH discord, pls let me know. I am awkward and quiet but I'd like to be around like-minded nerds. my discord is in my profile!


End file.
